Sidelights

Nick Cannon emerged as a rising, multitalented performer when he was
barely out of his teens. A talented stand-up comic, he was writing for
Nickelodeon kids' shows at a time when his peers were finishing
their high school credits, and went on to star in the surprisingly
well-received marching-band movie,
Drumline
, in 2002. In 2005 he began hosting his own hip-hop improv comedy series
for MTV,

which he followed by releasing his second album,
Stages.
He told journalist Aidin Vaziri of the
San Francisco Chronicle
that he needed a bit of help keeping track of appointment-heavy weeks.
"I've got four different schedules that I work off of,
" he admitted. "It can be a little hectic sometimes."

Born in San Diego, California, on October 8, 1980, Cannon was raised
partly by his grandmother while his mother, Beth Gardner, finished her
education and established her career as an accountant. He also spent time
with his father, James, who was an assistant pastor of a church in
Charlotte, North Carolina, and hosted his own television ministry. An
energetic child, Cannon was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder
(ADD) in elementary school, but both his parents and his grandmother
encouraged his obvious love of performing in front of others as an outlet
for his liveliness. Reflecting back on his childhood and other relatives
in an interview with
Philadelphia Daily News
writer Gary Thompson, he believes his ADD was inherited, but was grateful
he realized that "if you learn how to channel it, it can work for
you."

Cannon's first exposure before an audience came thanks to the cable
public-access show his father hosted in Charlotte. He wrote some jokes for
it, and
his father gave him a regular stand-up slot. At the age of 15, he was
picked to appear on the long-running dance show
Soul Train
to compete on its Scramble Board. By that point he was already performing
in Southern California comedy clubs, and went on to work as a pre-show
comic who warmed up the young audiences for the Nickelodeon cable network
shows. He admitted to nearly being way-laid by clothes, cars, and the
popularity race during his first years at Monte Vista High School in San
Diego, but once he had his first taste of professional success he realized
he needed to keep focused on his studies. "Suddenly, it
wasn't about being popular or what other people thought, "
he told
Boston Herald
writer Stephen Schaefer.

Cannon graduated a year ahead of schedule, and landed writing gigs for
such Nickelodeon fare as
Kenan … Kel
and
Cousin Skeeter.
He also appeared on another Nickelodeon show,
All That
, between 1998 and 2000. His film debut came as the chess-club kid in a
2000 teen comedy,
Whatever It Takes.
But Cannon was determined to break into Hollywood's upper
echelons, and concocted a scheme to pitch a movie idea to actor/comedian
Eddie Murphy by pretending he was a television reporter. He made it into
the room, but his ruse was quickly discovered. "His people tried to
shoo me away, " Cannon recalled in a
People
interview, "but Eddie wanted to play. He gave me a high-five when
I left."

Cannon had better luck in finding a high-profile show-business connection
when he met actor, rapper, and producer Will Smith, who bought him a drum
machine and gave him a small part in
Men In Black II
as the autopsy agent. Cannon also wrote and appeared in his own show on
Nickelodeon,
The Nick Cannon Show
, which ran for two seasons beginning in 2002. His first genuine break,
however, came when he was cast in the lead for
Drumline
, the sleeper hit of the 2002 holiday-movie season. Reportedly based on
the real-life experiences of music producer-songwriter Dallas
Austin—also the film's executive producer—
Drumline
featured Cannon as Devon Miles, a hotshot New York City musical prodigy
who wins a scholarship to a prestigious Atlanta college. He joins the
school's marching band, but chafes at the tough, military-style
discipline under the leadership of the respected band director, Dr. Lee
(Orlando Jones). Devon's arrogance covers some flaws, including his
inability to read music, and the coming-of-age story follows him on that
journey of self-discovery.

Drumline
pulled in impressive box-office numbers, and scored well with critics,
too. Writing in
Entertainment Weekly
, Owen Gleiberman declared that the film "does more than capture
the excitement of marching bands; it gets their clockwork beauty as
well."
Chicago Sun-Times
critic Roger Ebert lauded it as "a movie that celebrates black
success instead of romanticizing gangsta defeatism. Nick Cannon plays
Devon as a fine balance between a showoff and a kid who wants to earn
admiration." Ebert also commended the film's writers for
avoiding "all the tired old cliches in which the Harlem kid is
somehow badder and blacker than the others, provoking
confrontations."

Despite his impressive rise, Cannon claimed that he received no star
treatment from his family. "My grandmother don't care about
none of this stuff, " he told a reporter for the E! Online website
in 2003. "I went home yesterday, and I had to take out the trash, I
had to mow the lawn." His next project was a remake of a 1987
movie,
Can't Buy Me Love.
Re-fashioned as
Love Don't Cost a Thing
and starring Cannon as a nerdy high schooler who pays a girl to hang out
with him, the 2003 movie was the No. 5 box-office draw for its December
opening weekend.

Love Don't Cost a Thing
featured Cannon as the goofy Alvin Johnson, an automotive whiz and
high-school nobody, who hatches a plan to boost his profile by bartering
with one of his most popular classmates, cheerleader Paris Morgan
(Christina Milian), to fix the family SUV that she smashed. In exchange,
she must pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks. "Gawky and
guileless, Cannon makes a good case for Alvin's social awkwardness,
" noted Carla Meyer in the
San Francisco Chronicle.
Citing its Eighties-era predecessor, Meyer also noted that "the
biggest difference in this version is the leads are African American.
Otherwise, it's your basic rich-girl-transforms-nerd story, made
relatively fresh by lanky … Cannon." Robert Koehler, writing
in
Daily Variety
, singled the movie out for its portrayal of modern life, commenting that
what he found "intriguing" was "the prickly
interaction between barely middle-class blacks like Alvin and the
ultra-upscale blacks like Paris. This kind of commingling is rare in
American movies, as is the depiction of a casually integrated Los Angeles
student body that is past racial issues."

Cannon had said in interviews that he turned down many film roles after
the success of
Drumline
, and was determined to keep writing his own material and even produce his
own projects when possible. "As a young African-American man, there
aren't too many quality scripts out there, " he told
Schaefer in the
Boston Herald
article. "There are scripts where you can be drug dealers or
[there are] hood movies or degrading comedies, but I'd rather do
some quality
things that are catered to me." Cannon was also busy with other
projects, most notably his music career. After a few months of delay, his
self-titled debut CD was released the same month as
Love Don't Cost a Thing
, and featured an impressive roster of guests, including Mary J. Blige and
R. Kelly. The tracks were divided between a shady alter-ego character he
called Fillmore Slim ("Gigolo" and "Feelin'
Freaky") and more wholesome R…B crooner fare. Reviewing it
for
Billboard
, Rashaun Hall found a middle ground in the themes with the track
"Get Crunk Shorty, " which Hall termed "the perfect
balance of crunk and old-school hip-hop."

The success of
Drumline
helped Cannon score a deal with the Miramax film studio, which paid him
$1.5 million for one of his movie ideas, which he then finessed with two
other screenwriters and executive-produced. Filming began once he finished
his commitment to other projects, including the voice of Louis the Mouse
in
Garfield
in 2004 and an appearance as Bernard in the 2005 roller-skating comedy
Roll Bounce.
That next major project, which he wrote and produced, was
Underclassmen.
It was the number-three box-office draw for the September 4, 2005,
weekend that it opened, but critics were merciless. Cannon played a new
member of the Los Angeles police force, a rookie whose brash, impulsive
nature keeps bringing him trouble until he convinces his bosses to give
him an undercover assignment: his youthful appearance lets him pass as a
new student in an elite private high school to crack a murder
investigation there. The film critic for the
New York Times
, A. O. Scott, conceded that Cannon "has a loose, quick-talking
charm … but in this picture he tries on a series of secondhand
movie star identities, trying so hard to be the next Will Smith or Eddie
Murphy that his own personality all but dissolves."

Cannon finished his second LP,
Stages
, just before
Underclassmen
was released. Its breakout single proved to be the track "Can I
Live?" in which an unborn child asks its mother to rethink her
decision to terminate the pregnancy. Cannon based it on his own story, as
he told many journalists once the song was adopted as an unofficial anthem
by pro-life groups. "My mother was pregnant with me at 17 years
old, " he explained to Thompson, the
Philadelphia Daily News
writer. "A lot of people were telling her she wasn't
married, she was still in high school, so she should probably get an
abortion. But she said that like a voice spoke to her, and said she should
have this child. I used to say to her, that was my voice! I was talking to
you!"

The video for "Can I Live?" featured former
Fresh Prince of Bel Air
cast member Tatyana Ali as his mother, and became one of the
top-requested clips on BET and MTV. Anti-abortion groups promoted it as a
positive artistic expression of their moral message. Yet Cannon refused to
take a side in the debate, saying only that he was opposed to abortion as
a method of birth control. "It's a tough choice for a woman
to make, and people who have all these opinions about it should put
themselves in her shoes, " he told Elon D. Johnson in
Essence.

By mid-2005 Cannon was also hosting his own improv-comedy series for MTV,
Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'N Out
, for which he also served as executive producer and sketch director. The
show was arranged in contest format, with competing teams led by such
guest stars as rappers Kanye West and Method Man. The improvisational
challenges were largely the pranksterish Cannon's ideas, and he
reveled in exposing the big names. "When somebody's really
good at improv, that's entertaining, " he told
Entertainment Weekly
's Dan Snierson, "but it's not as much fun."